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The Laboratory Notebooks of Pierre and Marie Curie and the Discovery of Polonium and Radium

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The Laboratory Notebooks of Pierre and Marie Curie and the Discovery of Polonium and Radium Pierre and Marie Curie, polonium and radium THE LABORATORY NOTEBOOKS OF PIERRE AND MARIE CURIE AND THE DISCOVERY OF POLONIUM AND RADIUM J. P. ADLOFF 63 Rue Saint-Urbain, 67100 Strasbourg, France 1 Introduction It is an exceptional and moving privilege to remember at this historical place [Jfichymov] the centenary events which announced the rise of radiochemistry and conducted inexorably to the nuclear era of mankind. In the account of the early history of radioactivity Sankt Joachimsthal, now J~chymov, is intimately related to Pierre and Marie Curie who one hundred years ago discovered polonium and radium in a sample of Joachimsthal pitchblende. In 1897 Maria Sklodowska, who had married Pierre Curie in 1895, concluded her studies at the Sorbonne in Paris and was thinking of a subject for a thesis. The X rays were still a topical question but had lost the charm of novelty. On the other hand, the uranic rays discovered in 1896 by Henri Becquerel raised a puzzling problem. The uranium salts appeared to maintain an undiminished ability to blacken a photo- graphic plate over months. The law of energy conservation was solidly established since 50 years. What was the origin of this inexhaustible energy which apparently violated the Carnot principle, the first principle of thermodynamics, which states that energy can be transformed, but can never been created nor destroyed? Pierre Curie, a renowned physicist for his work on magnetism and crystal symmetry, had a presen- timent that the phenomenon was quite extraordinary and helped his wife in the decision. Marie Curie, in the biography of Pierre published in 1923, confirmed: we felt the investigation of the phenomenon very attractive, so much the more the topic was quite new and required no bibliographical research [1]. A small laboratory was offered to the couple at the Parisian School for Physics and Chemistry. Pierre Curie was already involved in a work on crystal growth and had opened a laboratory diary on the 16 of September 1897. The writing of Marie Curie appears in the notebook on December 16, 1897. This day is the beginning of her work on uranic rays, first alone, later joined by Pierre Curie, which will lead within one year to the discoveries of two radioelements, prelude to two Nobel prizes. In this lecture the work of Pierre and Marie Curie along the famous year 1898 will be reconstituted. Two sources of information are available: three laboratory notebooks kept at the French National Library and three publications in the Comptes Rendus de l'Acad~mie des sciences, the weekly reports of the Academy of Sciences. The dates are not always indicated in the notebooks, however the progress of the work can be established by cross-checking with the publications. During the first months Marie Curie writes practically alone, comments by Pierre are limited to a few words. Subjec- tive remarks are exceptional; on February 6, Marie Curie registers with anger the temperature in the laboratory: 6.25~ followed by 10 exclamation marks. It is an evidence of the miserable working conditions. The chronology and the connection of the documents are shown in Table 1. The three months covered in the first notebook are mostly used for setting up the equipment. CzechosJovak Journal of Physics, Vol. 49(1999), Suppl. $1 15 J. P. Adloff The second diary ends with the discovery of polonium. The last notebook begins after an interruption of 4 months; six weeks later the third publication announces the discovery of radium. The inscriptions are pursued more or less regularly until mid- 1900 with further important findings such as the phenomenon of induced activity. Afterwards the notes are more sporadic. Marie Curie consecrated most of her work to the isolation of a macroscopic amount of pure radium chloride for the determination of the atomic weight of the radioelement; the correct value 225.9 appears in the last page of the diary. Table 1. Chronology of the documents related to the work of Pierre and Marie Curie during 1898. l Notebook Publication 16 December 1897 - 18 March 1898 18 March 1898 - 16 July 1898 12 April 1898 [2], 18 July 1898 [3] November 1898 - 28 March 1902 26 December 1898 [4] With the sole notebooks it would be difficult to reconstitute the content of the publications. Probably the authors prepared drafts which have disappeared; it is likely that at several occasions results have been reported on sheets rather than in the diaries. In fact, the publications contain information which cannot be found in the laboratory notebooks and reciprocally observations registered in the diaries have not been included in the publications. 2 The strategy At the end of 1897 all knowledge on uranic rays was contained in the nine Becquerel publications in the Comptes Rendus, mostly during the first semester of 1896. After an initial excitement, the interest of scientists in the new rays faded rapidly. One reason was the proliferation of false or doubtful observations of the emission of radiations similar to uranic rays by a variety of substances including glow worms. One can say that the topic was moribund when Marie Curie entered the scenery. How undertake the subject chosen for Marie's thesis? One approach could be the search for substances sharing the peculiar property of uranium and its compounds. This seemed to be a logical process. It is clearly expressed in the introduction of Marie Curie's first publication [2]: I have searched if substances other than uranium com- pounds render air conducting for electricity. This last precision implicitly refers to the method used for the measurement of the radiation. The photographic plate by which radioactivity was discovered was a primitive and merely qualitative radiation detector. On the other hand, the ionization of air could be used for a quantitative determination of the action of rays and thus the intensity of their emission. However, a convenient measurement of very small intensities had still to be imagined. At this point the genius of Pierre Curie was decisive. In 1880, Pierre Curie together with his brother Jacques had discovered piezoelectricity. This is the production of electric charges when a pressure is applied to hemihedral crystals like quartz. Pierre Curie invented a device based on this phenomenon which is the key of the prodigious discoveries efthe Curies (Fig. 1). 16 Czech. J. Phys. 49/$1 (1999) Pierre and Marie Curie, polonium and radium B " ..... ~'"""" "T ''~'~' ~ePre teme I,I,L," terre i 7C Fig. 1. Scheme of the device used for the measurement of the ionization current. AB ioniza- tion chamber. CD connection to ground. E quadrant electrometer. Q piezoelectric quartz. weight [5]. The apparatus consists of two metallic electrodes between which an electric field is applied. One plate is loaded with a powder of the material to be tested. The uranic rays produce electric charges in the air and a ionization current flows between the electrodes. The charges in the chamber are compensated by opposite charges obtained by applying a weight to a leaf of piezoelectric quartz. The compensation is controlled by a quadrant electrometer. The charges produced by the quartz are calculated from the weight applied and from the time during which the weight is applied. Eventually the ionization current can be calculated. For the first time the emission of uranic rays could be quantified on the basis of the current produced by the rays under controlled conditions. The setting of the equipment was painful and fills 50 pages in the notebook. Humidity in the uncomfortable laboratory was the source of numerous difficulties. The handling of the device required considerable skill but Marie Curie now had an invaluable tool for routine measurements (Fig. 2). 3 Marie Curie's first publication The first publication on the 12 of April with the title Radiations emitted by uranium and thorium is signed Marie Sklodowska Curie [2]. Pierre Curie without whom the work would not have been possible is not associated as author. Two months before, Marie Curie had started the systematic search for compounds which may impart electric conductivity to air. She tested all samples at hand or borrowed from various collections. By courtesy of Henri Becquerel, she had access to the rich collection of minerals assembled by Professor Lacroix at the Museum of National History, the place where Becquerel had discovered radioactivity, There she found among other minerals pitchblende of various origins, in particular from Joachimsthal. Czech. J. Phys. 49/$1 (1999) 17 J. P. Adloff Fig. 2. Marie Curie in the laboratory and a view of the equipment. On February 18, she performed the first measurement of a pitchblende which was about twice as active as metallic uranium (Fig. 3). For each compound the weight in grams applied to the quartz and the compensation time in seconds are registered. For sake of comparison of activities the ratio weight over time (designated i in the notebook) was convenient. The ionization current itself is calculated from the charac- teristics of the quartz and appears only in the publication. Metallic uranium prepared by Henri Moissan in 1896 by reduction of uranium oxide in the electric furnace which he had invented, was used as a reference for quantifying the relative strength of radioactive substances. The intensity observed for pitchblende was quite unexpected since no uranium containing substance ought to be more active than the metal. It was not commented in the notebook, but numerous tests of the equipment which followed immediately show that Marie Curie was extremely preoccupied by the finding. Further significant results are shown in Table 2. Table 2. A selection of substances measured by Marie Curie [2]. Sample Intensity (pA) metallic uranium (Moissan) 24 thorium oxide 53 potassium fluoxytantalate 2 Joachimsthal pitchblende 83 Johanngeorgenstadt pitchblende 67 natural chalcolite 52 18 Czech.
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